Economy & Jobs

More on Economy & Jobs

“Today’s unanimous decision to reject tariffs on Canadian newsprint is welcome news for newsrooms across Connecticut and around the country,” Courtney said. “Connecticut print media companies import 100% of their newsprint from Canada, and the Trump Administration’s proposed tariffs would have increased their average costs by nearly 20% -- which would have resulted in cuts to content and employees. Adding tariffs to newsprint ad hoc creates enormous financial handicaps for businesses throughout the country, and this was the right call today by the U.S. International Trade Commission.”

This project has been a long time coming, and when it’s completed, it will greatly expand our freight capacity throughout eastern Connecticut and at the Port of New London. The federal TIGER funding I helped secure proved critical in the effort to leverage matching funds from private industry to get this project underway. These upgrades will allow the Port of New London to expand the amount of freight cargo that can be shipped in and sent out by rail across the region. This development is bound to expand industry and create new jobs across eastern Connecticut as shipping continues to grow.

The members wrote: “You have stated that the objective of this regulation is to ‘expand employer and employee access to more affordable, high-quality coverage,’ a goal we share. However, we are concerned that the impact analysis fails to explain sufficiently how the Department expects this proposed rule to achieve the desired outcome. For that reason, we respectfully request specific additional information on how the Department has determined this proposed rule’s potential impacts on coverage quality and cost – from the perspective of employers and employees.”

“This afternoon, Congress made a historic mistake in passing a seriously lopsided tax overhaul the will almost entirely benefit wealthy Americans and corporations at the expense of middle-class and working families,” said Courtney. “This bill will exacerbate our national deficit and sets up the rationale that Republicans will use to launch their long-anticipated attacks against Social Security and Medicare, which Speaker Paul Ryan has already brazenly promised to do. It is also a sneak-attack on the Affordable Care Act that will result in 13 million Americans losing insurance, and will cause health care costs to rise for millions more through the repeal of the individual mandate."

Congressman Joe Courtney (CT-2) today voted against the House tax plan. During debate on the bill last night, Courtney highlighted the impact of the measure on efforts to fill jobs through job training, higher education support and other efforts to close the national “skills gap.”

"If President Trump decides to revoke DACA it would punish children for the actions of their parents. Not only is that fundamentally unfair, it will indiscriminately deport some of the brightest most talented students in our country. At Eastern Connecticut State University in Windham, I met a few days ago with staff who reported that there are 93 DREAMers enrolled there with many of them pursuing STEM majors and averaging 3.55 GPAs. Our nation's employers are telling Washington in the strongest terms possible, we need those kinds of students in America's workforce, not in handcuffs. As an original cosponsor of the HOPE Act which will codify DACA and thus protect these young people, I will work to stop any harmful rush to judgment by the president."

“We have long agreed with the goal of the EPA throughout the DMMP process to balance environmental stewardship with standard economic activity in Long Island Sound,” wrote the members. “Our states have been responsibly dredging using open-water placement for 35 years, and we believe maintaining the EPA designation of the ELDS, along with an increased effort among the states to find sustainable on-land solutions for dredged materials, will continue to provide the Long Island Sound region with a balanced approach for future waterway projects."

“This news is no surprise- it’s a confirmation that the hard work to bring jobs to the region is paying off. It validates the impact of an increased workload at Electric Boat, which in turn creates jobs at the hundreds of Connecticut-based parts suppliers on the EB supply chain. Thankfully, we’ve partnered with local community colleges, the Eastern Connecticut Workforce Investment Board, and the US Department of Labor to create a strong job training program to ensure these local jobs are being filled by local residents. Our community is on the right track.”

"New York's frivolous lawsuit challenging a decade’s worth of painstaking work by the EPA to reform and improve the Eastern Long Island Sound's dredging plan blatantly ignores the facts and the law,” said Courtney. “EPA officials in the last administration conducted an open and transparent process for all stakeholders in proximity to the Sound, to update the dredging process, giving regulatory preference to upland disposal, and tightly screening the composition of dredge material to preserve the Long Island Sound ecosystem. EPA also moved the disposal site for material that cannot be practically moved upland, to Connecticut waters - not New York's - and allows a regional body including New York and Connecticut stakeholders to review any open water disposal that the Army Corps of Engineers determines is practicable.

Last February, President Donald Trump convened a group of manufacturing CEOs at the White House to discuss his administration’s idea of growing American jobs by imposing a border adjusted tax (BAT). As reported the next day, the BAT received lukewarm support at best, and unexpectedly, the CEOs instead pivoted the meeting toward the critical need to close the so-called skills gap preventing companies from filling high quality jobs with highly trained workers. Indeed, the next day, a national newspaper’s headline read: “Factory CEOs to Trump, ‘Jobs Exist, Skills Don’t.’” Fast forward to the present: The BAT was declared dead by congressional leadership at the end of July, but the most recent report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that 6.2 million job openings exist across the country, one of the highest levels on record.